"Rise Up, and Let the Storm Break Loose"

In a world called catastrophe
my native tongue is blasphemy - Matthew Good

Under the weather here, and under deadline, with no time to write. But that's alright, because I think we're just about beyond words.

The wider war that was always coming has almost come, despite the naive wishes of old school Americans of good sense who thought they were choosing another course for their nation last November. Bush's Wednesday speech - and most significantly, his reportedly bone-chilling pre-speech briefing to a late-waking press - is the closer on a deal gone down six years ago. By now, we should be well past He wouldn't - would he?

His speech reminded me of Goebbels' address to Germany on February 18, 1943. Stalingrad had fallen and an army lost and suddenly, after more than three years of unrivaled conquest, Germans were staring, dumbly, at catastrophic defeat. Goebbels' speech, like Bush's, met calamity and tragedy with a call for more of the same.

"Now is not the time to ask how it all happened," he said. But who? "We know our historic responsibility - Western civilization is in danger.... As countless letters from the homeland and the front have shown, by the way, the entire people agrees. Everyone knows that if we lose, all will be destroyed." Defeat is not an option.

Defeat, when it comes, is never optional. Though often it's spectacular.